Whiskey Rebellion

1794 Whiskey Rebellion

After the American Revolution, President George Washington bought about $25 million worth of state debt at the suggestion of his Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. The war left the states with enormous debt and runaway inflation. By buying the debt of these states the government centralized the debt and in doing so centralized the government’s power over the health of the economy. This stabilized the economies of the states, but meant the federal government had to come up with a way to pay off this debt.

Fig. 2 George Washington and Alexander Hamilton Illustration

To solve this problem, Hamilton proposed a few things...

• Firstly, the government would sell new bonds to investors. These bonds would give wealthy people a stake in the success of the government, which Hamilton believed would be essential to a vital economy.
• He also wanted to make America less dependent on foreign goods, so the government would subsidize American manufacturing and tax foreign goods.
• He also proposed the creation of a central bank, which would monitor and be responsible for things such as inflation and government funds.

Hamilton had another idea for paying off the government debt: taxes on the production and sale of certain goods. One of these goods was whiskey, setting up the economic battlefield which caused the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion.

Whiskey Rebellion definition

The Whiskey Rebellion was about more than just a tax on spirits.

As this quote from Alexander Hamilton demonstrates, it was also about the first show of a fledgling government’s power, used to squash an uprising by poor and disadvantaged farmers. The events of the Whiskey Rebellion echo across time, remaining emblematic of issues that are still debated on the American political stage today: federal authority, government interference, equitable taxation, and elitism.

Fig. 3 The Whiskey rebellion Painting

Whiskey Rebellion flag

In Pennsylvania, farmers began to organize and even designed a Whiskey Rebellion flag. In July 1794, Regional Tax Inspector John Neville threatened a farmer with arrest for not paying the tax. The next day, 35 farmers rioted at Neville’s mansion on Bower Hill, near Pittsburgh, demanding his resignation. Violence broke out, and the protesters dispersed.

Fig. 4 Whiskey Rebellion Flag

• Two days later they returned, this time as a group of 500 armed men. They torched Neville’s home and on August 1^st they declared a state of rebellion.
• In August, President Washington responded with a proclamation ordering the rebels to desist. He also called for military support to quash the insurrection.
• The rebels created a committee consisting of 15 of their members. This committee was meant to represent the uprising in negotiations with Washington. However, diplomacy failed to resolve the issue, and Washington and the committee were unable to reach an agreement and no laws were created.

Whiskey Rebellion Timeline

To the farmers, the whiskey tax wasn’t only a financial burden. The American Revolutionary War was still fresh in the public memory and had been instigated by the issue of taxation without representation. Taxation, therefore, was a touchy subject, and the whiskey tax seemed like a contradiction of the new nation’s ideals.

The Whiskey Tax and Pennsylvanian Farmers

At the time, the rural American population had little access to actual cash and conducted their local economies mostly through bartering. To farmers in the west, grain was an extremely valuable form of currency, but it was quite expensive to ship the grain over the Appalachians to the east. To overcome this, farmers often distilled their grain into whiskey. They would then sell the whiskey in small batches, which were more easily transported to the east or the south.

Fig. 5 Tarring & Feathering an Excise Officer, an engraving by John Rogers

When the Whiskey Tax was passed by congress in 1791, history says these farmers were especially impacted. The Whiskey tax was a regressive tax, which meant that it was taxed more when it was sold by the gallon than when it was sold in larger, bulk volumes. Therefore, larger distilleries, and the people who owned those distilleries, would pay less tax on their sales than the farmers who sold their whiskey by the gallon.

George Washington Whiskey Rebellion

To George Washington, the Whiskey Rebellion was a decisive event: it would either establish or undermine the authority of the federal government. As diplomacy had been ineffective, Washington gathered military troops to meet the rebels. This was the first use of the Militia Acts of 1792, which gave the president power to call state militia into federal service to enforce national laws.

Fig. 6 George Washington Illustration

The troops were an overwhelmingly large force, which the rebels were not willing to fight. Instead, the uprising collapsed at the military’s arrival, and the conflict was over without Washington’s troops having fired a single shot. Some rebels were tried, but only two of them were convicted of treason. Both of those convicted men were later pardoned by the president.

The Federalists vs. The Republicans

Both George Washington and Alexander Hamilton were Federalists, while Thomas Jefferson was a Republican who expressed opposition to many Federalist policies.

Whiskey Rebellion Significance

The Whiskey Rebellion remains an important event in history. The Whiskey Tax was the country’s first federally mandated internal revenue tax and set a precedent for taxation that affected citizens across all states. The squashing of the rebellion confirmed the power of the government to levy tax laws against citizens and to enforce those laws. It also widened the divide between the Federalist and Republican parties and their differing ideologies.